The capacity of the EU's offshore windfarms in the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea will be increased by 250% under a draft plan drawn up by the European commission. The Guardian reports: The total energy generating capacity in Europe's seas stands at 23 gigawatts (GW), from 5,047 grid-connected wind turbines across 12 countries, including the UK. Under a European commission strategy, the 27 EU member states alone would achieve a capacity of 60GW by 2030 and 300GW by 2050, with Germany set to hugely increase its investment in the sector.

According to the leaked paper, the commission "estimates that an installed capacity of 300GW of offshore wind [and around 60GW of ocean energies] by 2050 would be needed in the integrated, greener and climate neutral energy system of 2050." The commission writes: "This is feasible for a sector where Europe has gained unrivalled technological, scientific and industrial experience and where strong capacity exists already across the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping and installation. Nonetheless, it is a very challenging horizon. It means that offshore renewable energy capacity should be multiplied by 25 times by 2050. The investment needed is estimated up to 789 billion pounds."

The UK, which left the EU in January, has the largest amount of offshore wind capacity in Europe, with 45% of all installations. Germany is second with 34%, followed by Denmark (8%), Belgium (7%) and the Netherlands (5%). Over the summer, the German government said it would also increase its current 7.5GW of capacity to 20GW by 2030, with a target of 40GW by 2040. But the European commission has called for a more "resolute" approach across the bloc. According to a leak of the strategy obtained by the Euractiv news website, the "very challenging" target for new windfarms would come with an expected price tag of 789 billion pounds, creating 62,000 jobs in the offshore wind industry.

"The BBC, the UK's national broadcaster, and ITV, the biggest private player in the UK market, are in the 'concluding phase of talks' to create a rival to Netflix," writes Slashdot reader AmiMoJo. The BBC's director general Tony Hall said the aim was to launch the "BritBox" rival to Netflix in the UK the second half of 2019. Neither organisation would say how the services would be priced, but Lord Hall said it would be "competitive". There are reports it could cost £5 a month.

A similar service, also called BritBox, is already available in the US and has amassed 500,000 subscribers.
Their announcement promises "an unrivalled collection of British boxsets and original series, on demand, all in one place." Diginomica writes that "the more cynical among us" might call it "a knee-jerk reaction to Netflix," adding "the BBC has a bad case of Netflix envy."

They ask where this would leave future BBC-Netflix joint productions -- and whether BBC content would be removed from both Netflix and Amazon. But they also believe that if there is a threat to Netflix, it's the upcoming Disney+ streaming service with original Star Wars content scheduled to launch in late 2019.

A top Amazon executive privately advised the Trump administration on the launch of a new internet portal that is expected to generate billions of dollars for the technology company and give it a dominant role in how the US government buys everything from paper clips to office chairs. From a report: Emails seen by the Guardian show that the Amazon executive Anne Rung communicated with a top official at the Government Services Authority (GSA) about the approach the government would take to create the new portal, even before the legislation that created it -- known to its critics as the "Amazon amendment" -- was signed into law late last year. Amazon and the Trump administration appear to have an antagonistic relationship because of the president's frequent Twitter attacks on the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. But the behind-the-scenes lobbying by Amazon officials underscores how the company has quietly amassed an unrivalled position of power with the federal government.

The 2017 correspondence between Rung -- a former official in the Obama administration credited with transforming the federal government's procurement policies before she joined Amazon -- and Mary Davie at the GSA, offers new insights into how Amazon has used key former government officials it now employs -- directly and as consultants -- to gain influence and potentially shape lucrative government contracts. It has not yet been determined which companies will build the US government's new e-commerce portal, but Amazon is widely expected to take on a dominant role, giving it a major foothold in the $53bn market for federal procurement of commercial products.

A 31-year-old autistic man in the U.K. is suspected of hacking U.S. government computer systems in 2013 -- and he has one final chance to appeal his extradition. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian Even if Love is guilty, however, there are important legal and moral questions about whether he should be extradited to the US -- a nation that has prosecuted hackers with unrivalled severity, and one where Love could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison... His remaining hope for mercy is a final appeal against extradition in the high court in November. Love's hope is for a full and fair trial in Britain.

Even if he is found guilty in a British court of the most serious crimes in the US government's indictment, his legal team estimate that he faces just a few months in prison. Failure means Love will be flown to a holding facility in New York, placed on suicide watch and probably forced to take antidepressants, prior to a trial. If he refuses to accept a plea deal and is convicted, he will face $9m (£6.8m) in fines and, experts estimate, a prison term of up to 99 years, a punishment illustrative of the US's aggressive sentencing against hackers under the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Naomi Colvin, from the human rights group the Courage Foundation, tells the Guardian that "Lauri's case is critically important in determining the reach of America's unusually harsh punitive sanctions for computer crimes."

theodp writes "Depending on your perspective, the National Scrabble Championship is a major sporting event, an unrivalled intellectual competition, or the world's biggest dork-fest. So says Slate's Dan Wachtell, who turned to an anagram-drilling Unix program to gain an edge on the 850+ competitors. While hardly mainstream, competitive Scrabble is getting newfound attention thanks to the publication of Word Freak and release of Word Wars."